This website
is a means of sharing ideas and information with all those interested
in literature for children and young adults.

"Women's history
is the primary tool of women's emancipation." - Gerda Lerner

This
website began with my own love of children's literature and my belief
in the power of both that literature and the children for whom it
is created. It reflects many of my concerns as a professor of children's
literature and grew in response to two divergent but complementary
calls heard fairly consistently from colleagues in the field. The
first was for more and better theoretical and critical knowledge of
children's literature and the second for practical assistance in the
teaching of that literature. A variety of responses to both of these
have come forth, but the cries continue and our needs are still not
met. As the body of literary theory grows and those of us who teach
children's literature become increasingly involved with that theory
and corresponding research activities, an even greater need exists
for some means to bring theory and practice together.

There has been
an increase in more lengthy and more theoretically based critical analyses
of works for children and young people, but too often this work is assumed
to be esoteric, isolated from and unrelated to either children or the
teaching of children's literature. Many who teach children's literature
dismiss this work as being that of those who have little sense of the
child for whom the literature was created and even less for the practical
problems of bringing that child and the literature together. On the
other hand, there has been a proliferation of books about children's
literature that describe both literary works and activities with these
books but have little relation to theory, research, or even the practical
problem's of one's own teaching. We are interested in what our
colleagues do, but we are more interested in why they do it.
Even the most exciting practices cannot just be transported from one
situation, setting, and group of people to another. What teachers need
is a continuing dialogue grounded in the theory and research of both
literature and teaching that is focused on the particular problems of
the field of children's literature.

The purpose of
this website is to set forth a triad of literary theory, research, and
teaching as the basis for such a dialogue.

In an age of science
and technology when even literary theory bears such names as structuralism
and semiotica, we may begin to think of this theory as being very precise
and scientific. We must remember, however, that the purpose of such
theory is to bring readers closer to literary works. In the past several
decades both literary criticism and the theory that supports that criticism
have shifted from a base in the literary community of readers and writers
to the scholarly community of professors and university students. In
the process, literary theory has become more fragmented and, many would
say, more isolated, both from the literary works themselves and from
the readers and writers connected to those works in the non-academic
world. There appears to be no particular theory that dominates virtually
all aspects of literary writing and discussion as was evident throughout
much of our history.

Those who become
lost in what Geoffrey Hartman and others have called the wilderness
of contemporary literary theory, will find it useful to keep in mind
that all theories are themselves products of the imagination. All theories
are fictions, if you will, and they are much more tentative and more
imprecise than the fictions of story. A theory is a metaphor imposed
on discrete phenomena in order to explain those phenomena, identify
commonalities, and show relationships among individual and unique objects.
Literary theory, therefore, is a metaphor about metaphors. Theories
are fictions without the full strength of make believe engendered
by a fictional work of art, but, nonetheless, they are fictions which
may lead to insight and discovery. We try to confirm our belief in theories
by experience and experiment, but are, at the same time, fully aware
that they are refutable and ever susceptible to modification or disproof.

Theories
are judged by their applicability and their usefulness. As new phenomena
are created or discovered or existing ones perceived in new ways,
theory is revised to assimilate this new information. Thus, all theories
are in the process of continuous revision, and when a particular theory
can no longer encompass new ideas or new works of art, new theories
are developed. Each theory opens our eyes to new perceptions and new
perspectives, but it conceals as well as reveals certain aspects of
the literary work and the literary experience. Each offers a system
of useful, but incomplete, organizing constructs which continually
lead to new solutions, new problems, and new theories.

Like all fiction,
literary theory requires a willing suspension of disbelief, that condition
of mind philosophers refer to as the world of as if. We enter into Mr.
McGregor's garden or the land of Oz as if those places really exist
while, at the same time, acknowledge that they are not to be found in
the actual world of our everyday existence. So too we must learn to
accept the statement of a literary theory as if the premises were valid,
use that theory as a lens to examine the particular aspects of the literary
work or the literary experience on which it sheds light, and makes what
meaning we can of what we see with that light. The lenses I use to find
my way through the wilderness of literary criticism are closest to those
of the reader-response critics, particularly to the transactional theory
of Louise Rosenblatt. My personal literary history has also been influenced
by early studies based on the formalist approaches of the now old New
Critics and the archetypal theories of Northop Frye. It is from this
combination of perspectives that I view the theory, research, and teaching
of children's literature.

Literature
is, first of all, to be experienced, to be enjoyed, to be appreciated,
to be loved. Each reader, in the process of experiencing a literary
work, both brings meaning to and takes meaning from that work. Thus,
the meaning made from having experienced that work is personal and
idiosyncratic and is based on all that the reader has known and experienced
outside that work. Meaning is also communal in the understanding of
the human condition as expressed in and communicated by the work.
Without that initial appreciation of and engagement with the work,
the experience remains meaningless. The fact that teachers have assigned
a particular text or even read that text aloud to students (either
children or adult students of children's literature) does not necessarily
mean that those students have read meaning into or out of that text.
Without that process of meaning-making which is reading, there can
be no progression to critical or theoretical judgment. Once this reading
occurs, however, any further considerations of literary works has
some general notions about the nature of literature, that is, some
semblance of literary theory, at its core. Even the discussion of
personal events from one's own life in response to a literary text
is, on one sense, an implicit acceptance of the assumption that literature
illuminates or instructs actual life experiences.

This website was
created on August 14, 1995 and is continuously
revised.